Needle in a Haystack: Culturing Plant-Beneficial Helotiales Lineages From Plant Roots.

ABSTRACT: Root-associated Helotiales fungi are increasingly recognised as beneficial fungal partners promoting plant growth under nutrient-limited conditions, particularly, in non-mycorrhizal hosts lacking the ancestral arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. However, the ecology of these fungi is still cryptic as relatively few lineages have been successfully cultivated from roots for further study. Here, we attempted the mass isolation of root endophytic fungi to evaluate the recovery of known plant-beneficial Helotiales lineages using a tailored culture-based approach. We sampled six wild non-mycorrhizal species from the Brassicaceae, Caryophyllaceae, and Cyperaceae, growing in nutrient-limited alpine soils. We isolated 602 root endophytes and compared this culturable diversity with the one observed vi

SUBMITTER: Bruyant P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11996241 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature